THE RETURN OF BISHOP JAMES SHORT

“We are broadcasting live from the ‘House of the Exorcist’ here in the heart of St. Louis, Missouri!” cackled Chip T. Baggin. “Welcome to LIVE Exorcism here on The American Destination Channel!”

Mr. Chip T. Baggin was a squat, stocky man; with short grey hair and bulging, fishy eyes like so many in his home town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts. Baggin was usually seen on the network as host of his own programme, Kid Psychics, on which he interviewed children that supposedly had supernatural powers of one sort or another. Chip enjoyed playing with children. He enjoyed it a lot.

However, this Halloween Eve (October 30, often ominously termed “Devil’s Night”), Chip T. Baggin was introducing a different show, the aforesaid LIVE Exorcism. Not actually broadcast live, the programme was in reality being recorded shortly after sunset for showing later that evening. What the viewers don’t know won’t hurt them, eh? It gave enough time for some cheap special effects to be added, just in case no actual demonic spirits showed up -- as is usually the case on these “paranormal reality television” jaunts.

“I have been consulting with my Talking Spirit Board,” continued Mr. Baggin, “and it assures me that this house is haunted with many evil demons that will appear later on tonight! Luckily, we have our very own secret celebrity exorcist here to cast them out! We will be introducing him soon!”

Indeed, advertising for the LIVE Exorcism event had claimed that the house from which they would be broadcasting had been the location of an actual case of exorcism back in the 1940s. This was (not surprisingly, given the low moral quality of the people involved in this American Destination Channel production) a complete falsehood. The case that they had appropriated had actually taken place in the town of Mount Airy, Maryland. But for some odd reason, Mr. Chip T. Baggin and his so-far unnamed “secret celebrity exorcist” had refused to do a show from the State of Maryland. In fact, the very mention of doing such a thing seemed to bring a flush of fear to Chip’s decidedly unhandsome face. The fact that one of the priests involved in the original, historic case had been originally from St. Louis was enough for them to use in order to claim this as an appropriate location. The rest was typical media double-talk.

“But before we do that,” Chip Baggin went on, “let me remind you that LIVE Exorcism is brought to you by our sponsors, Imperial Farm Fried Chicken and GhettoCo Car Insurance!

“And now, let’s go back to our friends from the Tennessee Phantom Stalkers -- the world famous TPS, who are right now doing one of their expert paranormal investigations downstairs!”

Chip turned to a video monitor near by that was supposed to be carrying a feed from an individual named Mr. Chris Smythe, head of the aforementioned Tennessee Phantom Stalkers and “star” of yet another weekly programme of paranormal fakery known as Ghostly Asylums.

As Chip T. Baggin looked at the video screen there was suddenly a strange flash of orange and blue light across it, after which the monitor went blank.

“Chip!” bellowed the voice of Mr. Smythe with his ridiculously lower-class hillbilly accent. “This Chris! We havin’ some trouble here! We be… Aaaauughh!!”

Moreover, with this, the audio link suddenly went dead as well.

“Ummm,” stammered Baggin, “It sounds like Chris and his crew are encountering some ghosts and paranormal phenomena! We will get back to them soon! Maybe they will even have some EVPs for us!”

Recovering quickly, like the old carny fraud that he was, Chip T. Baggin then continued:

“Let’s go ahead then and introduce our secret celebrity guest! He has been away for a while, deep in religious contemplation… or something like that! But now, here he is, the one and only real-life Bishop and Ordained Exorcist…”

It was then that the hideous person whom Chip was introducing stepped into the room, wearing his grotesquely-purple suit and blasphemously-white clerical collar, with a wicked smile of total depravity spreading across his jowly, debauched features.

Chip T. Baggin concluded his introduction: “The All-American Pope of the United States New Catholic Church and Supreme Leader and Exalted Founder of the Institute of Paranormal Clerics (a registered trademark!): His Most Holy Excellency, BISHOP JAMES SHORT!!”

*****

My name is DR. DANIEL RUMANOS, Occult Detective. Though I have the physical appearance of a devastatingly-attractive human male, I am in reality not a mere mortal at all. I do carry within my blood the superior genes of the mysterious Watchers of Algol, this extraterrestrial heritage granting me numerous powers and abilities which appear as “magical” or “miraculous” to the people of Earth. While most Algolites live in seclusion from the other races of the cosmos, it has become my life’s work to use my gifts to help and defend the innocent against anyone that would harm or exploit them, especially in the name of false “religions” and “the paranormal”.

My crusade has become increasingly known over the years, and legitimate religious organisations and faith leaders have employed me from time to time in order to accomplish important tasks in which they cannot -- due to public opinion, fear of government reprisal, and so forth -- get involved. So it was with this case. I had been contacted by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis concerning this upcoming LIVE Exorcism television programme. I entirely concur with their condemnation of such foolishness, and with their endeavouring to make clear that the show was in no way Church-approved.

It was therefore my task to use my Algolitish powers, with the full sanction of the Catholic Church, to investigate the blasphemous broadcast and to prevent the perpetrators thereof from stirring up spectral spiritual chaos upon the unsuspecting human race.

Therefore, I travelled from my usual headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland, and secretly entered the so-called “House of the Exorcist” there in its middle-class St. Louis, Missouri neighbourhood. It was in the living room of the house that I encountered those three execrable individuals known as the TPS or Tennessee Phantom Stalkers: their leader, Chris Smythe, and his redneck cohorts, Bubba Porter and Nick Tolley. These three hillbilly want-to-be “ghost hunters” were seated on the floor passing around a marijuana “joint” when I entered, laughing as their shoddy “paranormal tech equipment” lay unused near by.

It was Bubba Porter, the most obese of the trio, who first noticed me.

Now, I had no time to waste dealing with these lower-class idiot “paranormal TV show” creeps, and so I cast forth a bolt of my Algolite energies directly at them. It hit Porter and Tolley hard, shredding them into many pieces. Sliced inbred, you could say.

Chris Smythe, however, had been shielded from my blast by Bubba’s bulk, and immediately ran across the room in an attempt to escape. He had heard the voice of Chip T. Baggin on the audio-video link, though the picture had now been lost as a side effect of my energy flash.

And then Mr. Chris Smythe screamed in agony as another blast of my alien powers destroyed him and the remainder of the room’s equipment. (It has been said by some that “hunting ghosts” can get one killed. Indeed, if in so doing you annoy Daniel Rumanos, it can also get your eternal soul sent to burning and everlasting Perdition!)

Having appropriately dealt with this rabble, I proceeded forthwith up the stairway to the room from which Chip T. Baggin was recording his part of the programme. I entered the room, grossly-enough, just as Baggin was introducing their “celebrity exorcist”: it was indeed my old archenemy, the false, fraudulent, and incredibly immoral villain known as “Bishop” James Short!

“You!” I said in horrendous disgust, “I should have known! So you did escape from the enemy dimension!”

“Yes, Rumanos,” replied the false priest with a sneer of total abject hatred, “and this time I shall see the world kneel before me! I, Bishop James Short, will use the power of the LIVE Exorcism event to conquer this world!!”

Moreover, with this, James Short generated a shower of blackest occult energies from himself, whilst I at the same time called forth multiple blasts of my orange and blue Algolitish force, and we clashed in a flashing collision of unspeakably dangerous mystical intensity. The battle was on!!!

*****

The false ”Bishop” James Short had been missing and presumed dead for some time -- apparently destroyed by the backlash of the awesome mystical force necessary to counteract his nightmarishly-insane attempt to gain power from resurrecting the eldritch Lizard-Emperor of Lemuria.

“So, James Short you bloody old sod,” said I between volleys of the magical energies we were throwing at each other, “how did you survive then?”

“The power I had absorbed from the Jewels of Atlantis preserved me!” shouted the execrable James Short. “It gave me strength to eventually work my way back from the inter-dimensional prison into which I had found myself transported due to your wretched interference!”

“But you are a wanted criminal, Short,” I replied. “Even if I had not shown up here, you would have found yourself in government custody for numerous heinous crimes as soon as this LIVE Exorcism nonsense hit the airwaves!”

“You are wrong, Daniel! So wrong! The power I will acquire tonight with the assistance of the great psychic Chip T. Baggin will enable me to return to my place as a public figure! I shall then make this entire world kneel and grovel before ME -- before Bishop James Short, Presiding Father of Fathers of the United States New Catholic Church of Louisville, Kentucky. The magical glamour of the spirit guides will undo all negative publicity, and I will rise as Lord of Creation! Tonight, America; soon, the WORLD!!!”

“You are mad!” I stated. “You are utterly mad!”

“I am sick of your disrespect, Daniel Rumanos!” screamed the insane would-be Bishop as he shot another blast of black-magical power at me. “I am sick and tired of your lack of the rightful worshipful attitude towards me! You will also bow down, Daemon-Star, or I shall see you absolutely destroyed!”

“You cannot win, James. I am here with the full backing of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. The Archdiocese itself has condemned you! You are a pariah before God and man! Stop this madness and repent before it is too late. For the sake of your eternal soul, I conjure you to repent!”

“Never, Rumanos! NEVER! I am the only Presiding Bishop in all of Creation, as I am also the only true GOD!!”

And with this last horrendously blasphemous statement, James Short used up the final scrap of mercy that I could ever have for him. I accordingly began to pummel him with the full force of my Algolitish powers. He continued to send back painful blasts of the obscenely dark occult energies that he had gained from his years of satanic dabbling, but I knew that in time I, Rumanos of Algol, could wear him down, weaken him and justly annihilate him.

It is then that an even more horrid thing occurred. A thing of unnameable, hideous and grotesque terror beyond all that had happened up until now. For it was then that both James Short and I were suddenly hit by a burst of magical energies from a third party; incredibly powerful and diabolically blacker-than-black energies that sent us both reeling.

When we mutually turned to see from whence this wholly unexpected attack had originated, both the evil “Bishop” and myself experienced a shock unimaginable. For what we beheld was a form darkly transfigured before us; the form of a man perfectly possessed by arch-deviltry and surrounded by swirling phantasmal myriads and myriads of the demoniacal imps and goblins that were now at his command. It was the form of Mr. Chip T. Baggin!

“Hahahaaaaaaa!!” screeched the terrible Mr. Baggin in unrestrained diabolical ecstasy. “It is revealed! I am the spokesman of our Lord BELIAL! Through his power I have lured you both here, Rumanos and Short, for your destruction! Then nothing will be able to interfere with my designs! For it is I, Chip Baggin, Master Psychic Extraordinary, who shall rule this world with the power of darkness at my direction! I am the unstoppable avatar of the Lord of Sin, Indulgence, and Self-Godhood! By the power of the infernal pact I have made with the mighty Belial, all shall now worship MEEEEE!!!”

*****

The great majority of the psyche-spiritual creatures that human beings and others refer to as “demons”, “evil spirits”, and the like are actually the disembodied consciousnesses of immensely-powerful, interplanetary life forms that were destroyed by the Watchers of Algol countless aeons ago. These include the Shaitans, the Maskim, the Kakodaimons, and several other races that the Algolites judged as becoming too powerful for the good of the future of the Universe.

However, it is when we perceived what was happening -- that these horrid beings were continuing to exist in a distorted, altered form -- that the current policy of total non-intervention was inaugurated by the Watchers. Nevertheless, the various trans-dimensional realms that are often collectively referred to as “Hell” were first opened in order to facilitate imprisonment of the numerous diabolical beings that had already appeared. One of the most absolutely vicious and grotesquely evil of these forms was the Andromedan Kakodaimon known as Belial, the one “without a master” -- the very entity with whom the insane diabolist psychic named Chip T. Baggin had made his pernicious pact!

The demoniacally-possessed figure of Mr. Baggin hovered before James Short and myself; the multitudinous attendant demons howling and swirling about him as an ebony black throng of unnameable eldritch horror.

And with this, Short hit Baggin with blasts of his own black magical forces and I suddenly realised, to my complete and utter terror, that for the moment the false “Bishop” and I were going to have to work together! For indeed this horrific Chip T. Baggin character had to be stopped at all costs!

I accordingly added my own Agolitish bolts of power to the forces with which Short was pummelling the possessed Chip T. Baggin. The latter continued with his peals of insane laughter, too utterly depraved by satanic madness to even realise what was happening. Eventually, he fell backwards, plunging body and soul into the portal to Hell -- that phantasmagorical Gehenna of the Damned -- from which he had called forth the demonic servitors of Belial.

Then, after Mr. Chip T. Baggin had vanished into the Pit, as the dreadful myriads of demons swirled rearwards to join and torture him forever and ever in that great horrid Abyss, James Short bolted towards them in bewildered anger.

Having by this outrageous action precipitated himself headlong into that hideous melee of devils, the wicked, mad, horridly debased, unspeakably sinful and totally abominable false-clergyman known among “paranormal enthusiasts” as Bishop James Short was soon quickly dragged with them into that Pit of Hell, the portal finally closing behind him.

As I left the house there in St . Louis that day, in order to deliver my report to the Archdiocese concerning my success in halting the unholy LIVE Exorcism event, I indeed hoped against hope that this time the world had finally heard the last of James Short and his repulsive, unmentionably corrupt and ungodly madness. I implored all that is good hear me and to insure that he will forever roast in the outer darkness, in the black flames of eternal torment. For this, I offered the following prayer:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle against the wickedness and snares of “Bishop” James Short. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, by the Divine Power of God, cast into Hell James Short and all the “paranormal clerics” who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.